


Skipping Stones

by EvilMuffins



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilMuffins/pseuds/EvilMuffins
Summary: Celica teaches her brother how best to skip stones.
Relationships: Anthiese | Celica & Conrad
Kudos: 7





	Skipping Stones

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the Celica & Micaiah zine! Thanks to Kandy for the beta!

A twig snapped nearby and Celica could immediately feel the warmth prickling at her fingertips. 

“Who’s there?” She called, leaping up from the fallen log she had been resting upon, despite the ache in her legs. The last battle had been brutal, and even finding time for a moment’s rest had felt like the true victory. 

“Anthiese!” Conrad chuckled nervously, stepping out of the bushes, hands held up in mock defense. “It’s only me. Or have you forgotten your big brother so easily during our separation?” 

“Conrad…” Celica let out a breath, splaying her fingers and allowing them to cool as her magic fizzled, unneeded for the moment. 

“Is everything alright? You weren’t injured during the last battle were you?” Conrad asked, pausing to pick up a fallen acorn, twirling it between his fingers as he approached. 

“I’m fine, I promise,” Celica reassured him with a gentle smile. Back when they were children, she had always been the one checking up on him. “I just needed a little time away from the camp, that’s all. Look, the fish are jumping!”

Celica made her way to the river’s edge, Conrad trailing behind just like old times. Of course there had been ponds and a lazy little stream back in Ram, but there was something different about witnessing life thrive in the time of war. 

“They really have no idea, do they…” Celica mused as a trout leapt greedily after a dragonfly. 

“About what?” Conrad came to stand beside her, following her gaze out into the meandering water. 

“Oh, nothing...”

After a moment or two, something entirely different splashed across the water’s surface. Looking to Conrad, Celica noticed that the acorn was missing from his hand. 

“Ah,” he said simply, nose crumpling as he watched the ripples. 

“You sound disappointed,” Celica laughed. Her brother always could cheer her up, even without really trying. “What did you think was going to happen?”

“I thought that I could get it to land on that flat rock there in the center… I suppose all that training with the javelin hasn’t really paid off all that much…” Conrad hung his head forlornly, a comically heavy sigh escaping him. 

Celica couldn’t help her mind from rushing back to their last battle, to the sight of her brother, mask never slipping once while lobbing a blood soaked javelin toward the oozing flesh of one of the Terrors. It was hard to believe that the Conrad of the battlefield was the same frightened child she once knew. She wished dearly that she could allow herself to be proud of him, but the circumstances under which he had learned to come in to his own were something that never should have been. 

They should have grown up together. 

But such helpless regrets rarely aided in the present, and currently Conrad was winding up to toss a stone as if he were attempting to play the ball sport that she and Alm and the others had invented back in Ram. 

Celica placed a hand overtop his, stopping him before he could let go.

“Pebbles that smooth are a rare find,” Celica explained, a mischievous grin tugging at her lips as she claimed a stone of her own from the rocky shore, not nearly so water-worn as the one Conrad still clutched. “Allow your younger sister to show you the proper way to skip a stone.”

  
  
  



End file.
